Isn't it up to the app developer to put buttons within one-handed reach?

Given the way the conversation has gone I was thinking about which use cases demand one-handed operation...the guys arguing that one-handed operation as a requirement may wish to rethink emphasizing their need for this capability...LOL.

Regardless of the exact dimensions, it's fairly obvious that developers are going to need to do at least some work in supporting new layouts and resolutions. If nothing else, there will be new technologies coming in iOS 6 that will require support.

With that in mind, is it time for Apple to clean up the App Store? Should abandoned apps be deleted or deprecated to make room for applications and developers who continue to update and improve their applications?

Have you noticed you can't buy 16:10 computer monitors anymore? And the MacBook Pro is basically the only laptop left that comes with a 16:10 screen.

It's a crying shame.

I know, wtf. Easily the best aspect ratio for a laptop. Video: 4:3, 16:9, everything looks great. Not a cramped browsing experience. So happens to make more room for the trackpad, which still outshines anything the other guys bother with.

I'm loving my rammed up 13" air atm (for its resolution mainly).
Retina pros with good software (and we know it will at least be pretty good) will rock the socks off my rounded-rectangular... feet.

Ah.... shape matters over size guys.

Edit: Just noticed iMacs are 16:9 now, as well as the 11" MBA. WTF. Am so happy with my 24"/15"/13"Edited by TimmyDax - 5/22/12 at 3:27pm

Originally Posted by Jason Geiger
Doesn't look legit to me. There is only 1 hole at the top. I believe the normal iPhone comes with 1 for ear speaker, 1 for proximity sensor and 1 for forward facing camera.

And given that the article is about the iPod touch, your point is… not actually moot, just partially wrong. You're right in that the top needs more holes that these images/renders don't show.

Originally Posted by DrDoppio
It is quite possible to design the UI so that it won't require access to the upper part of the screen for frequent actions. Just don't put buttons and controls at the top.

I don't want a giant, long penis-shaped phone.
I don't watch movies on my phone and that's pretty much the only winner with the longer screen IMO.

I will reserve judgement until I see the whole design, but this year might be the first time I don't buy a new iPhone (and I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling that way).

16x9 is just stupid. Why is the whole world changing everything around to support the makers of widescreen movies?
There is much more to life than movies (books for example)

I think you have the absolute wrong idea here. Making a phone more widescreen specifically for the sake of making it better for movie watching is a poor reason indeed that does not look like what this would be doing by making a new phone 1136x640 pixels. What this would be doing is making the display larger without sacrificing usability. Remember that your thumb pivots off to the side of the display when held in one hand, not on the top or bottom. This is important.

It also allows the device to still be pocketable as pockets tend to longer than they are wider. But that might not even be an issue if they reduce the casing on the top and bottom. They certainly have a lot more room to play with there than they do on the sides.

On top of that this rumour of a 1136x640 display makes a lot of sense. It not only allows for Apple to increase the display size without hurting the usability but it also allows users can use their apps just as they have in the past until devs can update their apps. Apps still be a pixel-to-pixel perfect rendering but with some border on the top, bottom or both.

They would surely also make this transition a cake walk for developers which would easily allow for scrolling windows to show more data without requiring a negative fragmentation of the OS that is unfavourable to devs and users alike. It's a win-win.

Will Apple do this? I have no idea but I hope they do.

This bot has been removed from circulation due to a malfunctioning morality chip.

Originally Posted by paxman
I used to, and still do if I can be bothered to think about it, that the current iPhone wastes a lot of real estate on the front. If those panels are real there is still some wasted space at the top.

IT's not wasted space if you hold the phone in landscape mode. for me, the primary uses of my phone are:

Phone calls

email

texting

games

now only two of those uses i hold it in landscape mode, because the screen is too small to really read email in landscape mode, the app buttons take up too much space. gaming is much more natural in Landscape mode as well. So to disagree with you, it's not wasted space at the top. you need a ticker bezel when holding in landscape mode. That's why the iPad has a uniform bezel on it. The in the case of the iPhone/touch it most likely has to be symmetrical top/bottom. Plus, the home button is about as small as i'd like it for now.

Personally, I hope it's not a 16:10 screen, even in landscape mode I find that aspect best reserved for a TV or a full-size computer monitor. However, I will say that i've been looking into buying a MB Air and even though the 11" is what I want, I quickly eliminated it from consideration due to the fact that the screen ratio is 16:10, just too small of a screen for that ratio. Anything 24" and above is optimal. I hate the 15:10 screen on my current 15" laptop. Apple got it right with the 2:3 ratio, it's the best aspect for viewing both in landscape and portrait. And since most apps for both OSX and iOS have a lot of menu bars at top/bottom, the viewable space in landscape mode is truncated even more-so. Dang, and I was going to upgrade my phone this year. Well, i'll reserve final judgement for the Sept/Oct launch. Heck, Apple may preview the device if it's that big of a change at WWDC.

1024 x 640 would require a smaller screen (3.9" = 310 PPI) to be a retina display. Interestingly, when I mapped the dimensions from these photos onto the current iPhone 4 in the mockup on the previous page, it came out at 3.9" diagonal while keeping the iPhone at the same width. I had to scale it up to get to 4.1" diagonal.

The article image shows a 16:10 screen so 1136 x 640 wouldn't work if these are genuine. Plus it would be 640p (1138 x 640).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Timbit
This is much better. Same phone size with larger screen, reduce bezel on top and bottom.

I like this idea in principle as it retains the iconic side bezel and looks very nice but the mockup there has no physical home button. You can see here how much better the widescreen is for movies (this would be 640p):

but it requires shrinking the home button or changing it into capacitive or a gesture bar to maintain the same phone height. I'm in favour of this if it works well in practise but if not, they can't build the phone that way just yet.

16x9 is just stupid. Why is the whole world changing everything around to support the makers of widescreen movies?

There is much more to life than movies (books for example)

Widescreen movies are usually wider than 16x9, more like 24x10. But let's say it was influenced by HDTV, which was influenced by wide movies. The practice is nothing new. The 4:3 aspect ratio used by iPad, older CRT and LCD computer displays, and just about every TV before the HD era was also originally from the world of movies: it's the aspect ratio used by silent films of the 1920s.

I like the design of the one at that link (the location gets censored by the forum unfortunately) but 16:9 is not a good ratio and the home button is removed. The one in the article photo seems to be around the following size, give or take:
The screen size chosen is the perfect compromise and really not much larger than the current iPhone as they shaved down the bezels by about half. 1280 x 800 would be quite good as 720p content is native but 1024 x 640 would be a good size to go with.
This won't affect most iOS content because of resolution independence in iOS 6 and also because most content will scale seamlessly. Games can be set to a different OpenGL context resolution and it will just resterize at that resolution. I don't really know why they haven't done this on every game (maybe cashing in on the iPad versions).
I hope this is the size of both the next iPhone and iPod.

Everyone is dabling on this screen size, which is understandible. But why aren't there lengthy discussions on the adjusted innards of the phone? We can't simply say that with a smaller bezel the screen can become larger. That would affect so many things, including battery life.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DrDoppio

It is quite possible to design the UI so that it won't require access to the upper part of the screen for frequent actions. Just don't put buttons and controls at the top.

That would be one possibility; for iOS to have a permanent notifications bar in view, that simply scrolls down when new info arrives and is being displayed at the top. Could still be tapped on, to open the app like it does now.

I'd have said 1024 x 640 makes the most sense as it only means 32 pixels top and bottom for apps limited to 960. 1024 is also a multiple of the iPad resolution.
It does lower the PPI below 300 on a 4.1" display though:
960 x 640 spread over 5.65 sqi = 329 ppi
so 329 ppi spread over a 16:10 4.1" display (7.56 sqi) = 818300 pixels.
1280 x 800 is 1,024,000 pixels = 368 PPI
1136 x 640 is 727,040 pixels = 310 PPI
1024 x 640 is 655,360 pixels = 294 PPI
1024 x 640 would require a smaller screen (3.9" = 310 PPI) to be a retina display. Interestingly, when I mapped the dimensions from these photos onto the current iPhone 4 in the mockup on the previous page, it came out at 3.9" diagonal while keeping the iPhone at the same width. I had to scale it up to get to 4.1" diagonal.
The article image shows a 16:10 screen so 1136 x 640 wouldn't work if these are genuine. Plus it would be 640p (1138 x 640).

I am not expecting any change in the PPI. I'm expecting that current 960x640 apps will fit on this new proposed size pixel for pixel taking up the exact same area.

1136x640 in a 3.9996" device is the exact same PPI as the current iPhone.

edit: I see how you got 310 PPI now.

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I can easily operate a galaxy s2 with one hand (even while driving, shhh...don't tell anyone) and that has 4.3 inch screen. And my hands are normal sized, not lebron james sized monstrosities. Like everything in life you just adjust. All you is adjust your grip. It takes about 20 seconds to get used to it. And the only two times i dropped my phone had nothing to with one handed operation and more to do with 1. soapy hands and 2. "what the hell was that thing that just crawled across the floor?"

Why do you people seem so afraid of change?

And like i said in another thread, lets not pretend we don't know how this will play out

The iphone will get a bigger screen, all apple fans will deny any knowledge of ever saying they didn't want it, apple will market it as if its the first ever phone with a 4 inch screen and its the best thing ever, most likely there will be a little kid in the ad (most likely a little girl), and everyone here will buy it anyway, including me.

Its been done before with siri, multitasking, 8MP cameras, and soon to be 4G. Its the apple way.

Everyone is dabling on this screen size, which is understandible. But why aren't there lengthy discussions on the adjusted innards of the phone? We can't simply say that with a smaller bezel the screen can become larger. That would affect so many things, including battery life.

The phone itself would be bigger so there's more room inside for a bigger battery. It's not like the iPad 3 where they upped the res in the same space. Plus, they are on a die-shrink of their processor, which improves battery life and makes for a smaller chip:

Same width as the iPhone 4
1024 x 640 3.9" screen
A5X processor
1GB RAM
Aluminium plate replacing the glass back. I'd say not unibody as they will probably be able to carve flat plates out much more easily and they would be more resistant to dents. They would use the existing antenna band so it won't matter about the back plate affecting signals. I expect they can make the aluminium backing plate thinner than the glass too.

I don't think they should worry about it being entirely scratch-proof in the same way they don't worry about the iPad.

All of these comments and no one has pointed out yet that this is most definitely a mock-up and not a "leaked part" as it's been billed as? Seriously, look at the shading to begin with. It's completely even around the entire thing, even in the hole for the homescreen. If the lighting were really set up to do that, the plastic would not look nearly as flat as it does, but would glow around the edges due to the nearly perfect circular lighting. The entire thing looks ridiculously fake and I have no clue why people are reporting it as anything less.

Originally Posted by Mr. Jeff
All of these comments and no one has pointed out yet that this is most definitely a mock-up and not a "leaked part" as it's been billed as? Seriously, look at the shading to begin with. It's completely even around the entire thing, even in the hole for the homescreen. If the lighting were really set up to do that, the plastic would not look nearly as flat as it does, but would glow around the edges due to the nearly perfect circular lighting. The entire thing looks ridiculously fake and I have no clue why people are reporting it as anything less.

I said it. People tend not to listen to me because I'm against the idea of an unusably big phone.

You look as silly as Ballmer when you make NEVER statements like that.

Of COURSE voice control will eventually replace using our fingers. It's the natural evolution to things.

I don't recall the quote, but I doubt he really believed it. I don't see a time where voice commands become all that is available in that regard. Consider texting. It came later, and it rid us of having to listen to many annoying loud people talk on their cell phones (not that I've heard anyone call them cell phones in a long time, but it's appropriate to the time I'm describing here). Voice control isn't a natural evolution at all here, as it lacks the same level of discretion. I think you may just be unimaginative as you're making a really common mistake. You see something, and you assume the direction is tangent to a current marketing feature.

Originally Posted by rtm135
Of COURSE voice control will eventually replace using our fingers. It's the natural evolution to things.

No, it isn't. Not in the slightest. Voice control has been around for decades, and it has been usable for decades. Siri isn't the first near system-wide implementation, and it isn't the first working system-wide implementation.

Voice Control technology, like all technologies, will improve over time. Since using speech is quicker than using our fingers to type or make gestures, the technology will eventually become one of the primary forms of control.